Faith Baptist Church | Elida | Lima | West Central Ohio

What We Believe

1. We believe that the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired of God and are inerrant in the original writing and that they are of supreme and final authority in faith and life.

2. We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in essence, while distinct in personality and function.

3. We believe that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, that He was crucified and resurrected, that He has ascended into heaven, and that He is there as High Priest and Advocate and is true God and true man.

4. We believe that the Holy Spirit is the agent of the new birth through conviction and regeneration and that He seals, indwells, and baptizes every believer into the Body of Christ at the moment of conversion. We believe that the Holy Spirit fills, empowers, and distributes service gifts to believers, but that sign gifts were restricted to the Apostolic Period.

5. We believe that all who receive by faith the Lord Jesus Christ are born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God and, in the eternal security of the believer, that it is impossible for one born into the family of God ever to be lost, because he is forever kept by the power of God.

6. We believe in “that blessed hope”—the personal, pre-millenial, pre-tribulational, and imminent return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, when the church will be “gathered together unto Him.”

7. We believe that the Church, which is Christ’s body, is the spiritual organism consisting of all born again believers of this New Testament Age. It is the agency through which God has chosen to accomplish His work in the world. Specifically, we believe a New Testament Baptist church is an organized body of baptized believers; immersed upon a credible confession of faith in Jesus Christ; having two offices (pastor and deacon); practicing two ordinances (baptism and communion), congregational in polity; autonomous in nature; and banded together for work, worship, edification, the observance of the ordinances, and the worldwide fulfillment of the Great Commission. We believe that the local church, under Christ’s headship, is to be free from any external hierarchy and should not associate itself with any ecumenical endeavor, neo-orthodoxy, new-evangelicalism, or any such efforts to compromise the Truth.